Babylon Confidential

Old things make me happy, and now I was living in the heart of one of the great old cities of the world. Good old Claudia was back. I’d left that broken, needy excuse for a Claudia back in the land of the free and the home of the brave, a place where I could be neither free nor brave. In England I was the master of my destiny, riding the wagon of sobriety, whip in hand, driving its horses onward to a new and more promising horizon.

It had occurred to me that the UK wasn’t exactly the perfect country of choice for an alcoholic. After all, drinking is a national pastime. And I love pubs. I knew that was going to be an issue. I jokingly pondered moving to Saudi Arabia. It’d be much harder to get a drink, but, knowing me, I’d manage somehow and instead of getting stone cold sober I’d just end up getting stoned, literally.

So since the Middle East wasn’t an option, and I sure as hell wasn’t going back to my life in L.A., I decided that London would either make or break me. It was the battleground where the fight for the new Claudia would take place, and so far I was kicking ass and taking names. I was confident and filled with hope. I was so grateful to have another chance that minor temptations seemed like daisies in a field; I paid them no notice, flattening them as I passed.

After being so sick for so long, I knew it would take my body a long time to forget the experience. It’s like being forced to chain-smoke cigarettes until you turn green and throw up. You don’t want another cigarette. You don’t even want to think about smoking. That’s how it was with the monster and me. We’d broken up. She was like a persistent ex-lover who keeps on calling, wanting to get back together, but I wasn’t taking her calls. As far as I was concerned we had nothing more to say to one another.

It would take four more months before I worked out that I’d underestimated my disease and that I was dealing with something that was less like a persistent ex and more like a stalker who was willing to take me hostage to make her point.

* * *

The year is 3034. We have medically suppressed our emotions to stop illogical thoughts from interfering with our decisions.

—Captain Belinda Blowhard

Starhyke was great fun—it was like a Benny Hill movie set in outer space. Aliens called Reptids release a weapon that unshackles the passions of the crew of the dreadnought Nemesis, producing unintended consequences. And in the strange way that art mirrors life, I was playing a robotically sober character who struggles to control her unleashed desires.

I’ve always put acting before addiction, even at the worst of times, and now that I was working I had my armor back. It was slightly tarnished and dented, but it was mine and I was strong again. The monster wisely kept her distance.

The show had a great cast. Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fett in the original Star Wars movies, was hilarious. And I got on famously with Suanne Braun, who had played the goddess Hathor in Stargate SG-1, and with Rachel Grant, who is an actress and an expert in Filipino martial arts. Everyone was very talented and enthusiastic.

It was a low-budget production. The food cost one pound per day per person, and boy, could you tell. Mystery-meat glop was the main course, and you couldn’t get a salad to save your life. But I knew I was in safe hands when it came to alcohol. Andrew Dymond, the director, and the majority of the crew didn’t drink, and when I went to the pub to socialize after work no one had a problem with my drinking Diet Coke.

At one point Andrew had some difficulties with the actors depicting the more intimate scenes. He asked me if I wanted to direct, and I jumped at the chance. Andrew directed the CGI and more technical scenes in the adjoining studio, and we developed a method for working in tandem that effectively allowed us to complete shooting on the entire first season. It was a great experience for me. I’d act in one scene and then jump over to the set next door to direct another.

In the storyline, Belinda Blowhard was battling the alien Reptids but failing to maintain control of her impulses, which was great fodder for comedy. By the time Starhyke production was coming to an end I could sense my inner monster was working on her own ultimate weapon. I’d have to do a better job of managing my passions than Belinda did. It was one thing to play a slapstick role and another thing to live it. I would not allow my life to become a farce.

When my monster did strike again I realized, too late, that I’d been preparing for the wrong kind of battle. I’d been expecting a frontal assault, something I could resist and perhaps overcome. In the meantime, the monster had been tunneling beneath the fortress walls, preparing a sneak attack.

It started with the affair I was having with one of the show’s executive producers. He was a very nice guy who’d lent me his flat in Bath while we were shooting the show. He was also a wine enthusiast. I figured that we had something in common, although I bet that no matter how much he knew, he wasn’t as enthusiastic about wine as I was. One day he invited me out to dinner, and I accepted, knowing there would be really, really good wine there and that he would offer it to me. That’s when the monster started whispering.

Claudia, you haven’t touched a drop in four months. You’re not an alcoholic, not even close. And this is an opportunity to prove to yourself that you’re not addicted. Just drink small quantities of the best stuff. Trust me, it’ll be okay.

I made an attempt to push the voice away, just for form’s sake. It knew it had me. It had already slipped past my defenses. It waited until I was sitting opposite my date and had seen just how good the wine was going to be.

Claudia. It’d be a shame to let half of a bottle like that go to waste. Have a little drink. You’ll stay on top of it this time.

And I did. For about a week. By the time you realize you’ve been pushed off the wagon it’s too late. You’re sitting on your ass choking on dust while life trundles off without you. The insidiousness of the disease makes you honestly believe that if you can stay sober for a few months then you are most definitely not an alcoholic and can therefore drink when you want to.

Sober for six months, drunk for a week, two weeks to recover. Sober for three months, drunk for five days, a week to recover. It’s a repetitive cycle, like that of Sisyphus, in the Greek myth, forever pushing that stupid rock up the hill only to have it roll down once it gets to the top.

* * *

When Starhyke ended I needed to find another job to earn a permanent work permit in the UK, so Andrew Dymond did me a favor and hired me as a receptionist and tea girl at his CG company.

“Hello, is that Lightworx Media? Can you advise me how to get more renderable data into my texture maps?”

“I have no bloody clue. I just serve the tea.”

Needless to say, I wasn’t well suited to the job, so I did us both a favor and quit. I sobered up, moved back to London, and rented a room in a friend’s flat. If I needed to work to stay in the UK, then it would be as an actress. My inner voice, the same one that had given me the confidence to move to L.A. when I was a kid, was back and giving the monster a run for her money.

Trusting in myself paid off again when I was introduced to a fantastic agent named Roxane Vacca by my friend Hilary Saltzman.

Roxane entered my life like a shining messenger of the gods, a letter in one hand stating she represented me and in the other a contract for a BBC series called Broken News. I’d booked a great job right out of the gate. I had enough documentation for my work visa, and I could stay in the UK. It felt just like when I landed Joan Green as an agent. Good representation is everything.

In the meantime, my stepfather had found a buyer for my home in L.A. and made me a million-dollar profit to boot, which made me feel much better about the loss of my house.

I was winning the battle for my new life. I was happy and confident. So why the fuck was I still stuck in a cycle of binging and detox? I started to see that I didn’t have an off button even when I was happy and my life seemed problem-free. When I was at a party I just wanted to keep on drinking and drinking. At dinners I wanted champagne, then wine, then a glass of port, and then another glass of port. I couldn’t have just one glass of wine, and I certainly never left half a bottle on the counter. I would see half-finished bottles of white wine in people’s